House Republicans seek probe of D.C. monument closures

House Republicans have already started probing the decision by the Obama administration to close off Washington’s World War II monument in an effort to turn the videos of veterans in wheelchairs pushing past barriers to visit the site into a defining image of the government shutdown.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa is “in the early stages of examining it,” spokesman Frederick Hill told POLITICO. “I don’t think we’ve sent any letters or requests at this point, but they’re possible.”

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Senior House Natural Resources Committee Republicans sent their own letter Wednesday to National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis to ask him to “take steps as necessary to keep and not destroy documents related to the decision this week to restrict public access” to open-air memorials and monuments in the Washington area, including those honoring veterans of multiple wars, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

The committee is “considering an oversight hearing in the near future,” wrote Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings and Public Lands and Environmental Regulation Subcommittee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah).

The two lawmakers want to know whether the parks service discussed or considered alternatives, including allowing previously scheduled tours by veterans groups; whether direction came from the Interior Department or White House Office of Management and Budget; and a comparison of the costs associated with transporting, erecting and maintaining barriers versus the costs of patrolling, securing, cleaning and otherwise keeping the sites open during the shutdown.

“It is imperative that the Park Service remove the barriers and allow the American public to resume visiting these open-air memorials, monuments, and parks without further delay,” they wrote.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor led a group of Republicans at an event on the Capitol steps Wednesday afternoon decrying the closings as well.

House Natural Resources ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) doesn’t think much of the Republican probe.

“Who are they going to file the inquiry with? Because of the irresponsible shutdown they caused no one will be around to investigate,” DeFazio said in a statement to POLITICO.

Both political parties are battling it out to win the public relations war in the shutdown talks in part by each using the closing of national parks and memorials as tools.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Wednesday offered to pay to keep the WWII Memorial open for the next 30 days as he blasted the Obama administration, a move the Democratic National Committee knocked as a “silly stunt.”

House Republicans have sought to force Democrats to vote against piecemeal attempts to fund the government during the shutdown, including measures to fund the National Park Service.

The White House and congressional Democrats have rejected the tactic as a cynical maneuver and say Republicans caused the broader shutdown - including the closing of all 401 national parks at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to businesses near the parks - by declining to approve a short-term extension of federal government spending that doesn’t include riders delaying or repealing parts of Obamacare.

The fracas started Tuesday when the media and policymakers may hay over a group of World War II veterans from Mississippi who took an early flight to DC that morning and, with the assistance of several House Republicans, made their way around barriers and visited the WWII memorial.

The park service subsequently decided to allow the Mississippi Honor Flights veterans access to the memorial “to conduct First Amendment activities,” according to a statement from park service spokeswoman Carol Johnson.

“Without staff or funding to ensure the safety of visitors, the security of the memorials, and the continued operation and maintenance of park facilities, the memorials on the National Mall – just like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon – are closed,” Johnson added.